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Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Europe bashing? It may be time to think again.

Conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Dick Morris scream that Obama is turning us into another "Europe," which is a euphemism for socialism. Leave the label aside for a second and consider that the European Union has a lower unemployment rate than the U.S. (Theirs is 8.6% and ours is 9.4%.)

How could this be? After all, didn't the U.S. have its vaunted system of "labor flexibility" and, therefore, could respond more quickly to adverse economic trends?

Seems that it hasn't been working.

Moreover, EU GDP fell by less than the U.S. so our capitalistic model really comes out looking pretty bad relative to the performance in Europe.

I forgot to mention that Europeans enjoy free health care, education, paid leisure time and a standard of living equal to ours. They also have lower crime rates in general, live in democracies and are free to travel anywhere they please.

If that's Socialism, honest conservatives should have a hard time making it look all that bad. The problem is, they don't, which is proof they are nothing more than dogmatic ideologues.

So when they say they are looking out for you, they're not! They're looking out for themselves and their own agendas, which mostly means being able to make big bucks from TV and radio ratings or selling advice. This necessitates keeping their audience--YOU--"dumbed down."

And those southern states that lure those foreign factories, are all the biggest recipients of Federal Gov't aid, per capita, of any states in the nation. They get more back from the Federal Gov't than they pay in. Michigan doesn't! So, autoworkers in Detroit can be said to support the workers of Senator Bob Corker's state of Tennessee and/or "subsidize" the lucrative tax incentives that Tennessee offers to, say, Honda and Toyota. Hypocrisy of the highest order!!